Musk’s 4-second surprise appearance at a video game tournament was met with boos and the crowd chanting “Bring back Twitter.”
Britta Pedersen-Pool/Getty Images
Elon Musk appeared for a brief 4 seconds at the Valorant World Championship Final in Los Angeles.
Onlookers quickly erupted into loud jeers. A clip showing the crowd chanting “Bring back Twitter,” has gone viral on X.
“Where is that from? That can’t be from in here, surely,” one of the commentators said, trying to bring the audience’s focus back onto the game.
Elon Musk, the owner of X, formerly known as Twitter, made a surprise appearance on Saturday at the world championship final of esport Valorant and was immediately met with a chorus of boos and the crowd chanting, “Bring back Twitter.”
A clip of his appearance, shared on Saturday by X user Jake Lucky, has since racked up over 7 million views on the platform.
A dimly lit clip shows a slice of commentators discussing the previous match of the game when the camera suddenly pans to Elon Musk in the audience.
Musk – who seemed to be clapping — appeared on the screen for about 4 seconds. It prompted loud booing that lingered even after the broadcast cut back to the game.
“Where is that from? That can’t be from in here, surely,” one of the commentators said, trying to bring the audience’s focus back onto the game.
Musk was attending the event at the KIA Forum in Los Angeles with his son, who he was posing for pictures with outside the arena. It is unclear which of his nine children attended the event with him.
Though Musk’s unannounced cameo was brief, it didn’t go unnoticed online.
Over 3 million people tuned in to the live broadcast of the tournament on the streaming platform Twitch, and clips of his appearance have drawn mockery from X users.
“Getting booed by Valorant players is like getting wedgies by the anime club in middle school,” said X user @Bolverk15 on Sunday, in a post now seen over 1.7 million times.
Musk announced in July that Twitter would be changing its name to X.
The controversial rebrand caused the site to be temporarily blocked in Indonesia under the country’s anti-porn and gambling laws.
Analysts and brand agencies also slammed the move, estimating that the loss of the Twitter brand could diminish the company’s value by a range of $4 billion to $20 billion.
And a month since, major brands appear to have mostly ignored the change, with only one of the top 25 advertisers in the US having switched to the platform’s new X symbol, Insider reported on Tuesday.